RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Thursday, March 16

[HH3os] Carter Heartbreak Born Like 808s trio

(1st round match-up 8 of 27)

Look, I am still trying to find a purpose and point to this
project, because the law of the internet is content and usually that means
visuals or videos but I am just a stupid person with a heart full of words. But
this trio really woke me up, not in hashtag way where I could get arrested
wearing a t-shirt about how woke I am then try and be political consultant and
appear on television shows for slight fee plus hotel and per diem, but for real
woke up angry militant earth lava BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP with no snooze button
option, only wake the fuck up and realize what’s been realized.

Lil Wayne – Tha Carter III

(released June 10, 2008; #11 on 2008 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)

This is the album pushed as Best Rapper Alive era official
example Lil Wayne, because corporate profits were built off this, unlike the
mixtapes. Really the only difference between this and his mixtape run though is
you ain’t heard these beats before they came out on this. I had a gig painting
a storefront in a small town, and the recession had hit so the auto mashers
junk tow trucks were rolling by like every hour, toting $250-$300 cars to the
masher for that scrap metal money, and people would be stopping at the
convenience store across the way (called Lucky’s, because of course) with “A
Milli” bumping constantly. That’s definitely the memory bank banger from this
album for me. But other than that, it’s really not any different than his
mixtapes, except he seems to be rapping about getting pussy a whole lot more by
this point, and also mentioning how he’s not from Earth. Both those things are
strong exhibits that Wayne was fairly deeply dedicated to his drug abuse by
this point. When all you doing is getting fucked up and making music, there’s
not really anything else to but fuck and think about space.

Thinking about space and drug-induced futuristic shit is
totally okay, like Cheech & Chong snorting that space week and blasting
through the ceiling of their shithole house, or old prog-rock bands getting
high as fuck while sticking about mathematics and devising space opera double
albums. The internal exploration of creative space triggered by contemplation
of external eternal space of all creation is some good shit. But it also
meanders along too far at times (like this Wayne does) and also can easily take
a mis-step into goofy noodling (as Wayne does, like on that “guess I’m fucking
a lady cop” song). And weirdly enough, this shit isn’t as fun as his best
mixtapes, which he was releasing like every other month before this came out,
and I guess if your model is “release a ton of mixtapes to build up hype for
actual album you get paid off of” you kinda want the album to be even half a
fade of a step above the mixtapes, or else people just gonna laugh and be like “why
am I gonna pay for some shit when I could get the same shit for free?” Then
again that thinking sort of entirely busted the entire music industry model so
I don’t even know what the business plan was, or is.

From my expert esteemed opined position, I give it THREE
STARS but almost said two until I remembered all the times he pretended he was
Martian.

Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak

(released November 24, 2008; #21 on 2008 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)

Space exploration through drugs is one thing, but this Kanye
album might be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever forced myself to listen to
in order it was created, because it is out-and-out Artificial Intelligence
Illuminati cybertronic propaganda. I am not sure if Kanye is cyborg or he was
promised vast wealth by cybertronic power structures and led along this path of
self-genius musical manufacturing (important distinction between “manufacturing”
and “creation”), though I suspect he is actually human, at least 3/4 so, and
this is all done in Robert Johnson at the crossroads type way, except instead
of mythology which led to amazing roots music, it’s real matrix shit that has
led to fashion mall muzak being given fake street cred.
I happened to have speaker system set up outside in the back yard first time
through this album, and there is no more glaring exposure of how false this
Kanye music is than it being in the out-of-doors with fresh sky air overhead
and crows in the distance babbling the ancient freestyles of rawest planet
rock. This shit is pure manufactured copper-artery internal IED designed to
turn your lava blood flow into stagnant sludge like unprocessed oil sewage.
There are so many examples of very clear lyrical turns which go essentially “wow
my life feels so fake, so I indulge deeply in this material distraction” and
somehow it is supposed to make soulless sound soulful. I will give Kanye the
benefit of the doubt and assume he is a misguided human being, but fuck man, I
had a pair of Roddy Piper They Live sunglasses in like four years, but I
imagine he’d be glowing silver if I looked at him. In fact the entire Kanye
aura feels like some bullshit “OBEY” demand being made, which has only
multiplied since he married Senora Cybertron herself. So much now is inserted
into stream of consciousness by algorithms, trending topics you are tricked
into even momentarily thinking about, and sometimes outright care for half a
minute, to where people you know and love and assume are real living human
beings who try to convince you through social media that some article about Kim
K or some song with Kanye’s involvement are actually worth you wasting fucking
five minutes of your shorter-than-you’ll-ever-acknowledge life. Natural stream
of conscious hijacked for material purposes, which I can’t really figure out if
it’s to benefit the ultra-wealthy (aka They) or to just keep all the rest of us
malleable and compliant in order to remain a good “human resource”. But
listening to this album, it’s not even trash, but a bonafide abomination
against organic existence in this universe. And it’s got Yakubian fingerprints
all over, in the sounds, in the consumerism-as-salvation lyrical content, in
all the fractured ways it feels fragmented but whole, which is to give the delusion
that fragmented existences can be made whole, like a computer, just run disk
defrag on your heart and you’ll be okay. But also get some Louis Vutton shit.
This is the cybertron battle in full – re-training human brains to think they
are computational machines, and that intelligence that is artificial is actual
intelligence of some sort. I don’t know man (or woman, or child), I’m bout to
rip off my shirt like Alex Jones up in this motherfucker, but then even that
dude has got the mechanical glow if I was to find my Roddy Piper sunglasses.
Stupid is smart, up is down, bad is good, and trash is genius.

ZERO STARS, total absolute light pollution turning the world
sky fogged, not a star to be seen, and ain’t none of us ever gonna be raptured
to live in space if they figure that one out.

DOOM – Born Like This

(released March 24, 2009; #48 on 2009 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)

After Wayne’s spacey experimentation (acceptable) and Kanye’s
open flirtation with android sexuality breeding artificial intelligences in
organic matter, having Doom boom through my brain was refreshing grimy
sandpaper. But not literal sandpaper like you get at hardware store, because
that’s weak ass manufactured sandpaper anyways, manmade artifice, but that real
sandpaper, without paper, where you’re at the ocean, getting yourself immersed
in the immensity of it all, but there’s rough and tumble undertow, and you get
thrown, held down by that immensity in sudden baptism of what the fuck the real
world really is, scraping along the bottom, scuffs to your torso, knee takes a
shell shank, and then you pop up, reborn into life, baptized clean of those
delusions of artifice, feeling fresh as fuck. That’s what this Doom Born Like
This was when I listened to it. It made me question this entire project because
obviously it is going to subject my personal being to a lot of crap ass hip hop
which probably isn’t even really hip hop in the spiritual sense. And for what?
Some stupid fucking project on the internet, that like a dozen people might
see? Pure delusion. Please Doom, cleanse me of all this delusion, help free me
from this bullshit.

NINETEEN STARS (easy)!

THE WINNER: Not even a battle really, as when you are
listening to Lil Wayne’s slow demise into codeine lethargy of spirit, and Kanye’s
open treachery against humanity in the name of shallow superficial greed, there
is no choice but Doom. (That is literal, as well as metaphorical.)

starting points

What It Do

Low art formed in low places by a real dude. Bread words on the bedazzling bedeviled internet machines. For flesh and blood contact, or exchanges of treasure or tribute): RAVEN MACK PO BOX 585 CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 22902. For 1s and 0s robot contact (or exchanges of virus and vinegraic piss): ravenmack at gmail dot com. Paypal support can be thrown at that email address too if you got it like that.

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